On several instances recently, the Obama campaign has referred to McCain attacks as "lies." They even ran a television ad to that effect:
Today, the Obama campaign it continuing a different line of attack on McCain. By using McCain's absurd statement that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong," they are pushing the "out of touch," narrative that connects to McCain not knowing how many houses he owns, to being in Washington for 26 years, and to McCain himself saying that he is out of touch.
More on the new line of attack in the extended entry.
In lieu of any data to support this assertion, the second ad simply strikes me as effective. McCain's own words on several occasions can be used to support the narrative, including two huge whoppers (not knowing how many homes he owns, and claiming that the fundamentals of the economy are strong). It is kind of hard to argue with that narrative given what McCain himself has said.
However, under the surface, I think there are problems with these two lines of attack co-existing with each other. Specifically, I have to ask, can liars be out of touch? Liars willfully distort the truth, while people who are out of touch are simply ignorant. As such, I worry that juxtaposing the two attacks creates a cognitive dissonance where it isn't entirely clear how the Obama campaign is attacking McCain.
My second worry comes from my personal paid media campaign. Specifically, now that I have moved my two ads from Pennsylvania to Nevada and New Mexico, the "McCain is 95% Bush" ad is significantly outperforming the "McCain is Out Of Touch" ad across all metrics. This makes me wonder if the "out of touch" attack suffers from similar problems to the "liar" attack that Matt outlined a few days ago. Voters don't seem to care if politicians are lying in isolation, and simply proving that they are lying is not enough to diffuse the attacks they make. There needs to be a rationale about why people are lying, and perhaps there also needs to be a larger rationale about why people are out of touch.
My theory is that the "McCain is a liar" and "McCain is out of touch" needs a third attack to supplement it in order to be more effective. There needs to be a rationale explaining why he is lying and why he is out of touch that not only gives those attacks more resonance, but which also removes the cognitive dissonance between the two attacks. An attack like "McCain is cynical" and / or "McCain is an elitist" might do the trick. McCain lies because he is a cynical elitist who thinks he is better than you, and he thinks he is better than you because he is an elitist who lives differently. In this way, the "lying" and "out of touch" attacks are able to co-exist as part of a causal chain that starts with McCain being an elitist. This chain also concludes nicely with McCain being the same as Bush.
Elitist don't live like you so they are out of touch with your experience. Because they are out of touch with your experience, elitists also think they are better than you, and so they don't care if they lie to you. If this reminds you of anyone, it's George Bush.
That's my theory, anyway. It is a little complicated to test with the personal paid media campaign, but I will give it a shot today anyway. I am going to alter the "McCain is out of touch" ad to matchup with new talking points, and then also create a third ad arguing that McCain is an elitist. Hopefully, the results will be educational, and we can come closer to unlocking the right attack against McCain.
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